Posts by Anonymous South African Coward

I don't have to save my work, it's in The Cloud. But Microsoft really must fix this files issue

The use of a LART is highly recommended in situations like these.

We need a BOFH icon.

Loose tongues and oily seamen: Lost in machine translation yet again

Wat gaan hier aan?

Queen Elizabeth has a soggy bottom: No, the £3.1bn aircraft carrier, what the hell did you think we meant?

"Superiority" by Arthur C. Clarke should be made compulsory reading for all manglers and project manglers of any kind.

Can you trust Huawei... or any other networks supplier for that matter?

Re: "he doesn't think it is possible to rank them"

All things Beancountery's the natural enemy of the BOFH/sysadmin/etc.

Probably the most rigorous public testing of Huawei's equipment is carried out by the UK's Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre, a Banbury-based operation known as "the Cell" run by signals intelligence agency GCHQ. As the name suggests, it only tests Huawei kit, not that of its rivals, so it's not possible to draw comparisons.

Really, they should test kit from other peddlers as well... As a security expert you will need to do such a thing in order to compare the various aspects of all kits when measured/compared against each other.

Guy is booted out of IT amid outsourcing, wipes databases, deletes emails... goes straight to jail for two-plus years

I simply can't do this kind of thing - delete files from an ex-company's server(s)... it just is not in me.

And because it is not worth the effort, hassle or whatever, and definitely not worth sitting in jail for.

No DeepNudes please, we're GitHub: Code repo deep-sixed as Discord bans netizens who sought out vile AI app

Teh Interwebz be not a fun place anymore.

Time to skedaddle outta here and start a colony on Mars...

Anyone for unintended ChatRoulette? Zoom installs hidden Mac web server to allow auto-join video conferencing

zooming in on masturbating users...

Not all heroes wear capes: Contractor grills DXC globo veep on pay rises, offshoring, and cuts to healthcare help

And, yup, lest we forget.... ====>

for the contractor with the big cojones willing to ask the hard questions nobody else want to ask.

Shareholders are the most important thing going at any company, and they must be kept happy at all costs.

Which is the wrong way around. Keep your staff happy and productive, and clients will be happy. And revenue will be steady.

BUT if you decide to keep your shareholders happy by outsourcing and cutting costs just so that more $$$ can go to shareholders, then staff morale goes to the dogs and clients will be unhappy with piss-poor responses from staff (they'll have an attitude to match) and also poor coding then you will start losing clients who'll go to other companies which will give them better service....

Florida man pretending to be police pulls over real police, ends badly, claim cops

We have a serious problem of ne'er-do-wells impersonating cops in South Africa.

UK privacy watchdog threatens British Airways with 747-sized fine for massive personal data blurt

What will happen should you make heavy use of outsourced IT and outsourced IT slips up big-time causing you to be slapped with a major GDPR breach and fine?

Oz watchdog claims Samsung's leak-proof phones ad campaign doesn't hold water

Re: Certainly not cave proof...

I hate reading about tight, confining spaces. And that made my balls crawl up for safety.

Re: I have a great idea!

For normal use outside of aqueous environments just fit it with a water jacket, pump and radiator.

And what'll happen when a criticality occur and the phone try to do an impromptu чернобыль impression? I have to assume that the water jacket, pump and radiator will be graded high enough to allow said criticality to occur without any sort of collateral damage? :)

I take any claims of waterproofing with an extremely large pinch of salt.

What is wrong with putting the phone inside a plastic baggy, sucking out all the air, then sealing said baggy, then taking said phone (inside said sealed and vacuumed baggy) for a dip?

Cheap form of waterproofing which can be removed quickly and easily :)

Firm fat-fingered G Suite and deleted its data, so it escalated its support ticket to a lawsuit

If you put your data in cloud, do make a backup - either on premises or at a different cloud provider. (like the other commentards above posted).

And ensure that you have the option to recover from accidental deletions.

And should you do backups, do test for recovery, preferably on a different/separate system.

It all costs money, but compared it to total data loss. I'm sure total data loss will be much more expensive. Unless you're a fly-by-night operator.

Another possibility would be that it was a 3rd party who've managed to hack the account and deleted it.

Not sure if GSuite account have 2FA on by default, or that you have to turn it on yourself.

Blackburn ain't big enough for the both of us: Mr Creamy and Mr Whippy at the centre of new ice-cream war

Sounds like a good porno movie...

/walks away nochalantly

BOFH: On a sunny day like this one, the concrete dries so much more quickly

This BOFH must be a coincidence as our HRdroid wanted us to recover a file from backup this Monday.

No problem... we can do it. Errr, which file was it?

It turned out to be a file from 2011. HRDroid got told to pound sand.

Let's talk about April Fools' Day jokes. Are they ever really harmless?

Ahhh, innocence lost.

Get rekt: Two years in clink for game-busting DDoS brat DerpTrolling

moral of the story : when doing a DDoS you cannot brag about your exploits, chances are that you will be doxxed by somebody whom you managed to piss off.

Front-end dev cops to billing NSA $220,000 for hours he didn't work

Bitten off more than he could chew?

Microsoft has Windows 1.0 retrogasm: Remember when Windows ran in kilobytes, not gigabytes?

*****The Legend of the Pea Sea*****

https://www.astro.umd.edu/~avondale/extra/Humor/ComputerHumor/PeaSea.html

Long ago, in the days when all disks flopped in the breeze and the writing of words was on a star, the Blue Giant dug for the people the Pea Sea. But he needed a creature who could sail the waters, and would need for support but few rams.

So the Gateskeeper, who was said to be both micro and soft, fashioned a Dosfish, who was small and spry, and could swim the narrow sixteen-bit channel. But the Dosfish was not bright, and could be taught few tricks. His alphabet had no A's, B's, or Q's, but a mere 640 K's, and the size of his file cabinet was limited by his own fat.

At first the people loved the Dosfish, for he was the only one who could swim the Pea Sea. But the people soon grew tired of commanding his line, and complained that he could neither be dragged nor dropped. "Forsooth," they cried, "the Dosfish can only do one job at a time, and of names he knows only eight and three." And many of them left the Pea Sea for good, and went off in search of the Magic Apple.

Although many went, far more stayed, because admittance to the Pea Sea was cheap. So the Gateskeeper studied the Magic Apple, and rested awhile in the Parc of the XerOx, and he made a Window that could ride on the Dosfish and do its thinking for it. But the Window was slow, and it would break when the Dosfish got confused. So most people contented themselves with the Dosfish.

Now it came to pass that the Blue Giant came upon the Gateskeeper, and spoke thus: "Come, let us make of ourselves something greater than the Dosfish." The Blue Giant seemed like a humbug, so they called the new creature Oz II.

Now Oz II was smarter than the Dosfish, as most things are. It could drag and drop, and could keep files without becoming fat. But the people cared for it not. So the Blue Giant and the Gateskeeper promised another Oz II, to be called Oz II Too, that could swim fast in the new, 32-bit wide Pea Sea.

Then lo, a strange miracle occurred. Although the Window that rode on the Dosfish was slow, it was pretty, and the third Window was prettiest of all. And the people began to like the third Window, and to use it. So the Gateskeeper turned to the Blue Giant and said, "Fie on thee, for I need thee not. Keep thy Oz II Too, and I shall make of my Window an Entity that will not need the Dosfish, and will swim in the 32-bit Pea Sea."

Years passed, and the workshops of the Gateskeeper and the Blue Giant were many times overrun by insects. And the people went on using their Dosfish with a Window; even though the Dosfish would from time to time become confused and die, it could always be revived with three fingers.

Then there came a day when the Blue Giant let forth his Oz II Too onto the world. The Oz II Too was indeed mighty, and awesome, and required a great ram, and the world was changed not a whit. For the people said, "It is indeed great, but we see little application for it." And they were doubtful, because the Blue Giant had met with the Magic Apple, and together they were fashioning a Taligent, and the Taligent was made of objects, and was most pink.

Now the Gateskeeper had grown ambitious, and as he had been ambitious before he grew, he was now more ambitious still. So he protected his Window Entity with great security, and made its net work both in serving and with peers. And the Entity would swim, not only in the Pea Sea, but in the Oceans of Great Risk. "Yea," the Gateskeeper declared, "though my entity will require a greater ram than Oz II Too, it will be more powerful than a world of Eunuchs."

And so the Gateskeeper prepared to unleash his Entity to the world, in all but two cities. For he promised that a greater Window, a greater Entity, and even a greater Dosfish would appear one day in Chicago and Cairo, and it too would be built of objects.

Now the Eunuchs who lived in the Oceans of Great Risk, and who scorned the Pea Sea, began to look upon their world with fear. For the Pea Sea had grown and great ships were sailing in it, the Entity was about to invade their Oceans, and it was rumored that files would be named in letters greater than eight. And the Eunuchs looked upon the Pea Sea, and many of them thought to immigrate.

Within the Oceans of Great Risk were many Sun Worshippers, and they had wanted to excel, and make their words perfect, and do their jobs as easy as one-two-three. And what's more, many of them no longer wanted to pay for the Risk. So the Sun Lord went to the Pea Sea, and got himself eighty-sixed.

And taking the next step was He of the NextStep, who had given up building his boxes of black. And he proclaimed loudly that he could help anyone make wondrous soft wares, then admitted meekly that only those who know him could use those wares, and he was made of objects, and required the biggest ram of all.

And the people looked out upon the Pea Sea, and they were sore amazed. And sore confused. And sore sore. And that is why, to this day, Ozes, Entities, and Eunuchs battle on the shores of the Pea Sea, but the people still travel on the simple Dosfish.

Renamed "file manager" to a more apt "file mangler" :)

Because if you're not careful, it'll mangle things. :)

Facebook celebrates Independence Day by lighting up American outage maps

In the South of Africa there were some people moaning about whatsapp and fartbook givening issues.

I just continued with my day as normally as I don't use fartbook.

Finally in the UK: Apollo 11 lands... in a cinema near you

I was born in 1969, so this year holds a special half-century anniversary for me.

I'm eagerly waiting for the day the 'nauts lifted off 50 years ago.

Of course I believe that we made it to the moon and back.

=====> one for all of us who was born in 1969. Here's to the next 50!

Here's a great idea: Why don't we hardcode the same private key into all our smart home hubs?

The drop-bear really should hurry up and drop in like a ton o' bricks on insecure IoT devices.

The drop-bear...

appeared in the '/etc/dropbear/' folder and was called 'dropbear_rsa_host_key.'

Is this a reference to "The Last Continent" by Pterry? Or was it an Aussie coder (as the previous poster implied)?

ReactOS 'a ripoff of the Windows Research Kernel', claims Microsoft kernel engineer

Pity Groklaw is no more.... :(

I got 502 problems, and Cloudflare sure is one: Outage interrupts your El Reg-reading pleasure for almost half an hour

Today's excuse:

Dynamic Programming Interrupt

Sounds feasible. Okay, let's do it.

A Register reader turns the computer room into a socialist paradise

Re: I spit on your socialist paradise...

In Soviet Russia, your PC terminates you.

Re: "Before Norton and the others arrived."? Not really.

In those days I had a copy of Golden Bow defrag utility before finding SpinRite, Norton Disk Doctor and Norton SpeedDisk.

Good days having to resuscitate/fix crosslinked FAT entries!

Those old defrag programs were the dangerous sort as they tend to move files before writing to the FAT - and will cause data loss should the power go off during a defrag operation. More modern ones were a bit hardened that they first copy the file, then change the FAT, so the file will not be lost should the power go off for whatever reason.

PCwrite? Luxury!

We had to make do with EDLIN. :) :p

ha.

Back in the days it was WordPerfect 4 or 5 on DOS for me. Best wordprocessor ever. With SuperCalc 4 or 5 for spreadsheeting. And the odd Harvard Graphics should you need to massage your spreadsheets so that the higher-ups can understand the figures.

And it ran like the clappers on an 386SX/DX - and did the job and did it properly. Not like today's bloatware that tend to flake out when trying to insert or add some arb stuff to an overdue document, not to mention macro viruses that tend to make life interesting for you.

It's us, only backwards. DXC registers new corporate entity: World, meet *drum roll* CXD Infrastructure Solutions

Is this a joke waiting for reverse gear and a ferret?

Oracle goes on for 50 pages about why it thinks the Pentagon's $10bn JEDI cloud contract stinks

Oracle's filing said that US "warfighters and taxpayers have a vested interest in obtaining the best services through lawful, competitive means... Instead, DoD (with AWS's help) has delivered a conflict-ridden mess in which hundreds of contractors expressed an interest in JEDI, over 60 responded to requests for information, yet only the two largest global cloud providers can clear the qualification gates."

Sounds like sour grapes if I'm not mistaken.

The fight for JEDI will be hard and horrible, and lots of shenanigans can be expected.

Frustrated Brits can dump mobile providers by text as of today

Re: Criminals, number spoofing

Snap.

Was about to say the same. Ne'er-do-wells will abuse this system.

Stop using that MacBook Pro RIGHT NOW, says Uncle Sam: Loyalists suffer burns, smoke inhalation and worse – those crappy keyboards

Re: Fire Suppression System

Nah, the BOFH'll just modify the fire suppression system to add more fuel to the flames, so to say.

And make sure it'll spontaneously self-combust in a boredroom full of self-important people, with the door locked unfortunately, oh dear.

Delphi RAD tool (remember that?) gets support for Linux desktop apps – again

What a flashback to the old days of DOS and Borland...

Could an AI android live forever? What, like your other IT devices?

Eldest daughter got a bluetooth headset. Worked quite well, until the micro USB port started to tear loose from the circuit board.

Opened it to find that its battery was also swollen.

Just chucked it away and got a normal headphone with cabke that you can replace. No more problems.

BOFH: What's Near Field Implementation? Oh, you'll see. Turn left here

Ending the week with a good BOFH.

Now about those keyboards...

The dread sound of the squeaking caster in the humming data centre

Re: I have BOFH fantasies...

Ok, the server seems to be working again, but where did I leave the carpet & quicklime?

Didya checked inside the Head Beancounter's boot.... ?

Re: DEC Engineer

the circuitry detected it, started the generator, detected power again, and switched the generator back off!

Thats' what happened to us in the one building - sparky wired the genny up incorrectly.

We found that by tripping the switch going to the genny's managerment console on the main DB let the genny continue chugging on during a power failure.

Re: Not Me But...

...whilst an orderly shutdown was arranged.

How long did an orderly shutdown take back in the day?

And how long did it take to get everything booted up after an orderly shutdown?

Because I'm just curious to know, give that we have PC's and servers that can now boot up and be operating in less time to down a cuppa coffee.

That this AI can simulate universes in 30ms is not the scary part. It's that its creators don't know why it works so well

Skynet Awakens.

In Rust we trust: Brave smashes speed limit after rewriting ad-block engine in super-lang

Smoothwall + DNSBL works for me. No more pesky ads, save embedded YT clips.

DeepNude deep-nuked: AI photo app stripped clothes from women to render them naked. Now, it's stripped from web

So who will get the rap if somebody's deepnude get posted and said person want to take that to court?

Seems the genie is now truly Frankenstein Unbound.

Re: Time passes...

Thorin start singing about deepnudes and deepfakes.

Gandalf looks on in disgust.

Gandalf kills Thorin.

Oh snap! The road's closed. Never mind, Google Maps has a plan...

And field-recovery units for hire :)

A couple of years ago I was sent to a remote site to do some installation work.

Did it, but finished up when the sun touched the horizon. And I was far from home (120km more or less). So I digged out my trusted Nokia 5230, activated the GPS and all that, just for a shorter voyage back home (obviating the need to pick up Mr Spock et al along the way). And why not? It never led me astray.

The GPS led me to take a route through the middle of a township - which, at night, is NOT a good place for a white person to be. I managed to keep my wits, and get myself out of there ASAP.

Suffice to say that I now no longer do blind-driving-rely-on-GPS (except for the occasional "where is that shop" trip with SWAMBO).

I now tend to look up my destination on Google Maps (or whatever), make a note of any possible danger zones on my route, and then I use my GPS as backup guide, knowing that it'll warn me should there be a major accident ahead, or some local speed cops hoping for a quick buck.

HERE maps also have the additional feature of warning you should you go above the max speed limit for a certain section of road, great to avoid an unscheduled and unwanted chat with the local traffic constabulary.

People blindly relying on GPS guidance will get the wind taken out of their sails sooner or later.

You're not Boeing to believe this, but... Another deadly 737 Max control bug found

Psion Flight Simulator for the 48k Spectrum is always an option.... Oh wait.